Yellowstone 2013

Lots of pictures ahead! I took a lot of cute pictures on our trip to Yellowstone last week so I’m posting them all!

We had our yearly Yellowstone trip with Dan’s family this year and even though the whole family wasn’t there, we still had a lot of fun! I was just a tiny bit stressed about trying to prepare for a week long trip with a baby, including food, while training for Ragnar, and leaving 2 days after finishing Ragnar. But luckily Dan keeps me calm and we did a ton of preparation in the week before we left so it wasn’t too bad!

We rented a trailer and we were able to really see how Dan’s “new” truck handled a long drive pulling something big. It did awesome! Even though I’m not a truck person at all, I really loved how much room we had while driving, and Owen’s car seat fits in the back in the middle and we can easily look back and see him, which is awesome! This was my view of Owen playing with his toys or snoozing. Pretty dang cute. The trailer was really nice and clean and very convenient, especially with Owen. We got there on Monday evening and just relaxed and got unpacked and settled in. Tuesday we drove around the park with Dan’s parents and Owen did awesome. He slept in the car and when he was awake, he was super happy and so good.

It was pretty chilly the first few days and we turned the heat on in the trailer at night! It rained but I loved the cool weather and we were prepared with warm clothes!

We had a picnic lunch and checked out some hot pots and the river. I wasn’t able to walk a lot but luckily my foot was much better so I just tried to take it easy. Please look at Owen’s sweet cankles in the picture above. Love them.

Dan cooked us some yummy dinners on his Camp Chef that he got for Christmas.

One night we had dinner at a yummy BBQ restaurant we always go to and this picture pretty much sums up the madness. This was only about 1/4 of our entire family and it was still madness. It was so fun and crazy and there were only 5 kids out of the 17 there!

On Wednesday, we drove to Old Faithful and Dan and Owen and I had some time to ourselves. We sat on the upper deck of the Old Faithful lodge to watch the geyser go off and it was really fun. Owen was a happy camper as usual.

We checked out Yellowstone Lake and we saw a lot of animals! There was a moose right by our campsite that we saw several times, we saw an eagle, several bears (one was really close), and we saw a coyote get run over by an RV on the freeway near Malad on our way there…traumatic.

We did some wolf watching at our favorite spot. It was beautiful and we had some nice shade. Dan spotted the wolf and we also saw a bear. We didn’t stay as late as usual because of Owen, but he was pretty happy and we got to see a wolf! 

This girl is a WILD CHILD. She is adorable and hilarious and totally crazy. She never holds still and Julie finally just set her in the dirt and let her loose. She got into a bag of cheetos and they flew everywhere and of course, she had to eat one. She was killing me and I’m so impressed with how chill Julie is with her kids. Hopefully I can learn a few things .

I fed Owen some banana a few times and he didn’t really like them too much! It was his first bites of “real” food and he kept gagging and wouldn’t swallow. Hopefully we will get better at eating, although I have suggested to Dan that I just breast feed him until he is 5. It is so much easier! He didn’t go for it so I guess we will keep practicing…

We went to Artist’s Point and saw the gorgeous waterfall. We also got to try out our new umbrella stroller this trip and we really liked it! After doing a lot of reading, we decided on the First Year’s Ignite stroller. It wasn’t super cheap or super pricey, the handles are tall, and it is fairly light. The seat reclines a bit and the canopy is nice too. The basket isn’t super big but we always had a backpack so that wasn’t a problem. Success!

These crazy boys made the trip really fun. They made me super excited and super terrified for Owen to get bigger. They are full of energy and were constantly dirty and running wild! They are adorable and I loved playing with them and watching them be wild and crazy boys. My favorite was all the rocks they collected and how they called them “crystals”. So precious.

Everett let me cuddle with him while we had s’mores one night. Love that kid. And yes I have socks and flip flops...get off my back.

Mike and Hailey were there too, but I didn’t get many pictures of them. They had baby Weston (6 weeks!) and he was a trooper and slept almost all the time. I loved Dan and Mike with their Bjorn’s when we walked around West Yellowstone. Best dads ever.

We also had our usual pizza at Wild West Pizzeria and it was delish. Owen had fun play with Grandma.

On Friday we went to the Firehole River to cool off a bit. It is a really popular place because the water is pretty warm and there are rapids that you can float down and there were tons of people there. I didn’t plan on bringing Owen in the water, but of course we had to dress him in his cute little swim outfit!

Grandma and Grandpa were a lot of help with the babies. It was pretty hot and Owen wasn’t loving his life. I fed him and got him under an umbrella and he was happy for a while so Dan and I could soak in the water for a while.

I just put his toes in the water but he didn’t really love it because it was kind of cold. I love his chubby little tummy!

Baby Weston was a happy camper and just chilled and slept in his car seat the whole time!

We had a lot of fun this year in Yellowstone with the family and Dan and I already have our next trip planned over Labor Day again. It is one of our very favorite places and this year didn’t disappoint!